Alternate title: Where I was.
This absence was two years in the making. My wife spent countless hours planning this, and forcing me to go to stupid timeshare sales pitches. So where was I? I was in Europe for the past three weeks. I will spend a few bytes over a few posts detailing my trip. The reason for the lack of posting? We all know how the EU feels about freedom of speech, so I wasn’t about to access this blog, lest I find myself in some European prison because some Islamist or Eurofag took offense at something I once said on here. I had originally scheduled a bunch of posts to cover things during my absence. I usually do when I am travelling. In this case, my scheduled posts sat there and didn’t post, showing a “failed scheduled” status. WordPress glitch, I suppose. For that reason, the posting on this blog didn’t happen as it was supposed to. The “OPSEC” post was scheduled for the last day in March. It didn’t post until nearly a week later. I didn’t know that until I was airborne over the Atlantic on my way home.
The planning for this trip began two years ago. The time share pitches were through Hilton. It seems that you get a lot of Hilton Honors points if you sit through sales pitches for their timeshare product. My wife would use those points to get us all sorts of things- more on that later, but it turns out those pitches (5 of them in total) wound up saving us about $8 thousand, and we didn’t even have to spend any money on a time share. I guess it was time well spent. My wife is good about finding deals like this.
The time for the trip began with a flight to New Jersey. We left the house and our cats in the possession of our trusted house sitters and headed off to the Orlando airport. As usual, air travel was horrific. We were supposed to land in Newark, but we were stuck orbiting in the area due to unfavorable winds for about 15 minutes. Then it seems the pilot must have only put five bucks’ worth of gas in the plane, because we had to divert to New York’s JFK to get fuel. We were informed the fueling would take about 3 hours, and we were free to leave the plane and drive to Newark, but our checked bags would have to stay on the plane to be retrieved later. We decided to stay.
After fueling, the plane took off and spent an hour flying the eighteen miles to Newark. In all, our original plan to arrive in the hotel in Jersey City by 6pm was thwarted- we didn’t get to the hotel until nearly 1am. I will continue the story tomorrow-
7 Comments
Dan D. · April 6, 2026 at 8:06 am
Cats?!
Divemedic · April 6, 2026 at 8:16 am
Yeah. My wife wanted a pet. I am a dog person, but dogs are a lot of work. Cats are better when you travel a lot because they pretty much take care of themselves. Make sure there is an automatic feeder, automatic water, and a box for them to shit in, and they can last a week or two without anyone coming by.
So my wife got a pair of cats. I went along with it.
ghostsniper · April 6, 2026 at 10:10 am
In all of our 42 years together my wife and I have had cats (her) and dogs (me), til lately.
My mutt died last Sept and I’m getting terribly mutt-lonely. We’re down to 2 cats now (from a high of 10 briefly) and 1 of them will mostly be gone this month.
So spill it man, I want detail. How does one do “5 time shares” and reap $8k?
Dan D. · April 6, 2026 at 2:45 pm
I figured it was something good like that, just had to jive you a bit. My thumbnail sketch of you was indeed “dog guy.”
My last contract was writing firmware for the Whisker litter robots so I got a taste of the “cat care” business. Y’all are a flippin’ goldmine.
Divemedic · April 6, 2026 at 3:40 pm
We have a pair of Litter Robots.
Beaner49 · April 6, 2026 at 8:48 am
You need to even things up..get a Malinois
lynn · April 6, 2026 at 3:48 pm
As long as you did not buy any timeshares. My father-in-law went into rehab after four surgeries and spent the next six years there before passing away. Everything was ok until my wife found out he had five timeshares. My wife spent five years killing off those timeshares because we sure did not want to inherit them nor did my wife’s sister. My wife killed off the last one right before he passed away.
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Then we found out about the two lots in Branson Missouri on the wrong side of the mountain. My wife paid the HOA fees and property taxes for two years and then told them to eat the lots. The annual fees were more than the lots were worth. We live in Texas, so did my father-in-law, so the lots were worthless and worthless to us. My father-in-law got good and snookered when he bought the lots in 2007 for $55k each. Yup, right before the big real estate crash. After the crash the lots were worth maybe $1k each but the county was charging property tax as if they were still worth $55K each.
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I heard the doorbell ring one day and I answered the door. The postman was there with some certified receipt mail from Missouri for us. My wife yelled at me to slam the door shut. I did so and she told me her latest phone battle with those people.
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